If you can’t beat them, buy them—at least that’s what Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE) allegedly thought it could do with a rival that surpassed them in artificial intelligence innovation.

The U.S. Department of Justice is filing suit against HPE to block its January 2024 attempt to acquire Juniper Networks, one of the company’s rivals in the wireless networking solutions space, for $14 billion. According to the lawsuit, HPE executives for years showed “concern” about Juniper due to its fast-growing AI, called Mist, which helped the company achieve rapid growth.

To back things up: Juniper acquired an independent networking startup called Mist Systems, which had been building tools for remote cloud management, AI, and machine learning, in 2019. Mist AI uses machine learning and data science to “materially decrease the cost of operating a wireless network,” according to the complaint, while also increasing “the productivity of network administrators.”

Mist kickstarted rapid growth for Juniper: The organization saw its market share increase by 6.5% in just two years after the acquisition, despite limitations brought on by the pandemic.

Source: FORTUNE

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